The Royal African Society
Website Development
Increasing membership and Improving individual user-experience for RAS members
The Royal African Society is a membership society whose mission is to facilitate mutual understanding and dialogue between voices and interests in the UK, Africa and the rest of the world. We redesigned RAS’ existing website into a 3-in-1 website to enable RAS community members to experience a straightforward navigation structure, access to make donations, and get involved in every activity.
User interface design and Wordpress Development
The main aim of the RAS project was taking a lot of information and breaking it down to make it easier to digest. Our tool of choice was Figma – a collaborative interface design tool. Collaboration was essential to the success of this project; it allowed us to plan and execute the Ideation, Wireframing, Interface design and Prototyping stages with the relevant stakeholders.
The user interface designs were converted into a responsive and search engine optimized (SEO) website by building a custom WordPress theme. This was done by first creating the web static templates and then converted the static templates to WordPress.
Subscriptions powered by Stripe
As a membership organisation, an increase in paying members was at the top of the list of KPIs. To meet this objective we needed to find a secure and cost effective provider that could accept payments from potential customers across the globe. Stripe billing was the obvious choice. It allowed us to build and integrate multiple annual subscription plans and one-off donation payments in no time.
Bespoke Member area
We built a bespoke web application hosted on a sub domain to power the donation process and the member area. We chose to separate the member area and donations from WordPress for that extra layer of security. Using APIs we were able connect the WordPress CMS with the member area to showcase member only discounts, news and events. The member area gives the user full control of their membership. They can cancel or upgrade their membership, edit their professional and personal details as well as configure their membership benefits.
Salesforce integration
We integrated Salesforce with the member area and donation portal using Forrest, a PHP Salesforce Library. The new web app sends new and updated membership data and donations automatically to Salesforce, ensuring the CRM is always uptodate, allowing the RAS team to get a clearer picture of their users, run reports and make informed decisions that not only increase membership renewals but also improve efficiency.